Basically speaking these 3 helms were created by the Wow dev team, a dev team which is being paid by everyone who pays a subscription to Wow. Everything u listed is not created by the Wow dev team, and that means theyre not being paid by the subscribers.

If there was no Blizzard store these helms would not exist. So what are you whining about?

Originally Posted by Darklordvyperx

Let's face it. If Blizzard simply put these items into the game, without charging for them, acquiring them would involve months of monotonous daily quest grinding, which people would then whine about. As long as the store items are only cosmetic, then as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't affect game-play, and therefore should not be frowned upon. Saying that the store items affect the game and it's future has no basis in fact and is simply an opinion. There is no "malpractice" involved by the way. Saying so is implying that Blizzard is doing something illegal. Which they aren't.

I don't think they'd even exist, but if they did I guess they'd be at DMF for some tickets?

The Wow mouse is made by Steelseries. It is Steelseries who pay all of the development costs for making this mouse. All Blizzard does is agrees to have the Wow logo on the mouse. They both then split the profits.

i could use the same explanation for all the other MERCHANDISE that u listed.

Basically speaking these 3 helms were created by the Wow dev team, a dev team which is being paid by everyone who pays a subscription to Wow. Everything u listed is not created by the Wow dev team, and that means theyre not being paid by the subscribers.

Benbos, we all know ur extremely good at not understanding anything on these forums but this mistake is just hilarious.

Blizzard pays them, not the subscribers, so they can do whatever the hell Blizzard wants them to.
If you're not a shareholder, you have no business telling where the resources should be spent.

EVERYTHING in the Blizzard store is COSMETIC ONLY. THERE IS NOTHING IN THERE THAT GIVES YOU ANY TYPE OF ADVANTAGE IN GAME. I'LL SAY IT AGAIN, THERE IS NOTHING IN THE BLIZZARD STORE THAT WILL GIVE ANY PLAYER ANY TYPE OF IN GAME ADVANTAGE. I don't understand why there are so many people against the fact they're selling transmog helmets. Don't want one? Don't buy one. There is no advantage to buying one. Jesus Christ, people need to chill out and stop making such big deals out of nothing.

Everything _so far_ is cosmetic only. I guess people are getting upset over it because of the xp buff potion that got datamined.
Before starting WoW a year ago, I played LOTRO for five years. Swore I'd never quit for just as long. The game went F2P a few years ago. One by one parts of the game got reworked to be usable via the store only. Other parts saw little bits removed with a silly excuse like 'did not work out as we planned' or 'is too powerful' only to be added to the store a few patches later. Most of this stuff you had a minuscule chance to get ingame if you were up to days of grinding (and all the people I know of who were grinding, were doing so in their sleep via macros and multiboxing). Came a point where our raid leader kindly required us to buy some buffs from the store for a boss challenge we had a hard time with. And ofc, to PvP without store items became near impossible.

So yeah, the minute the store gets anything else than vanity items, I'm outta here also. The gloom and doom might be a few years away, as someone pointed out, but I'm not prepared to pay sub for those few years and slowly get pressured into store upgrades if I want to have a raid spot or level fast enough to get a raid team into a new raid in a new expansion. The two or so years I endured LOTRO in P2W mode, I could have been having much more fun somewhere else. Stupid loyalty and hope has no power against money from the people with deep pockets.

Every time Blizzard announces something new for the pet store we see the same threads come up about how a game with a monthly sub fee shouldn't have a microtransaction store. I get really frustrated when I see these posts because some people just don't get it.

You pay a monthly fee to be able to log in to your account and play; nothing more, nothing less.

Blizzard is a business and they have to do with that money whatever they feel will be most profitable. This can be anything from developing PvE and PvP content to developing items for the Blizzard store. The purpose of the former is to keep people subscribed to WoW and maybe even bring old people back/new people in. The latter is designed to bring in additional revenue to be able to develop more content.

The most important thing to realize is that Blizzard will NEVER make Tier Sets or any current content gear available for cash; they are not stupid enough to do that and you can mark my words that it'll never happen.

The Blizzard store is not a slippery slope, it is a smart business move to bring in more money for the company. The more resources Blizzard has, the more content they can develop and the better off we are as players.

You are an idiot and a terrible, terrible fanboy. "Derp as a company, they're here to make the MOST money they can NOT make the BEST game they can!" fucking idiot. This company started out making great games NOT looking for large amounts of money, JUST being able to keep making more games but they became GREEDY as almost EVERYONE with lots of money does and becomes TERRIBLE. But still has the IDIOT fans that support them the entire way despite how terrible they've become, much like METALLICA. Go figure.

You are an idiot and a terrible, terrible fanboy. "Derp as a company, they're here to make the MOST money they can NOT make the BEST game they can!" fucking idiot. This company started out making great games NOT looking for large amounts of money, JUST being able to keep making more games but they became GREEDY as almost EVERYONE with lots of money does and becomes TERRIBLE. But still has the IDIOT fans that support them the entire way despite how terrible they've become, much like METALLICA. Go figure.

Who are you to say they weren't looking to make large amounts of money? Who doesn't want to become fabulously wealthy doing something they enjoy? Also capitalizing certain words does not make your point any stronger. In fact it makes it less so. Making something BIGGER doesn't make it more correct. You also want to know what helps you keep your successful game studio successful? A crap ton of money in the bank that way if you do make a few flops or mistakes you have the cash in the bank to ride the hard times out. Blizzard isn't just a gang of cool kids making video games because they think it's cool like you seem to want it to be and except for maybe the very very very beginning it never was.

Thus far the only idiots are folks like you who can't make a salient point without speaking in stupid cliches about people being overcome with greed and such. If you don't like it don't buy from it it's as simple as that. They could have a 2 or 20 million subscribers if people didn't buy things from the store they wouldn't keep putting items on it. As things are people have voted with their money: they like being able to buy things from the store. You don't. Oh well. Either play wow and don't' buy things off the store or quit.

“Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
"Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."
Ambrose Bierce
The Bird of Hermes Is My Name, Eating My Wings To Make Me Tame.

Who are you to say they weren't looking to make large amounts of money? Who doesn't want to become fabulously wealthy doing something they enjoy?
....
Thus far the only idiots are folks like you who can't make a salient point without speaking in stupid cliches about people being overcome with greed and such.

1. If they were, they certainly did not expose it so visibly as they do now. Greed blinds them.
2. You tell him to not use cliches while you yourself do just that when you say "Who doesn't want to become fabulously wealthy doing something they enjoy?". There are still morally intact people in the world, people who understand that money is not everything, that it has a tendency foremost to lead people astray not guide them to the correct destination and whatnot. But it's a dying breed.

Ultimately this question is about whether you are used to being the OBJECT of the society, or aiming to become the SUBJECT of the society. Most people in this thread are flat-out objects.

Labelling you lot as communists might be a bridge too far, but you've definitely exhibited enough antagonism to merit the label of anti-capitalist. Oh, you naive little ones, who still think there's a better way to run the world than money, a way that hasn't been tried and failed before, a way that would actually work. Capitalism brings with it the maximum of convenience, leisure and general enrichment of one's life. Anti-capitalism breeds misery, poverty and your place in the queue to receive your rations.

I didn't know Mitt Romney had an mmo champ account.

I'm not going to derail this thread arguing economic structures with you. But are you serious? Do you actually believe what you typed. Have you been living under a rock for the last century or are you just trolling?

The fact that so many people in this thread are oblivious to ethics practices regarding buisinesses and corporations is absolutely mind blowing.

I am pretty sure the old Tabards, Mounts and Pets... in the CCG and few dozen IN GAME items sold in the last 6 years used some resources too.

But you had no problem with it because they were made by Cryptozoic and even sold on ebay at ridiculous prices, but NOW that Blizzard introduces a few of these fluff things in their cash shop they are .. evil...

... So to YOU it is a problem that Blizzard gets the money instead of Cryptozoic or just another 3rd party (in which you never saw anything negative early on).

Which proves you are a simple Blizzard hater while not even playing their games ... (Fans couldn't care less about merchandised stuff, on the contrary).

BTW: designing, producing and distributing merchanised stuff takes resources too from a company. Blizzard is bigger than a bunch of digital encoders.

So making T shirts, mice, mats, in game items sold by 3rd parties has been happening since the start of WOW. You simply are terrified Blizzard is now being paid by selling them on their website (instead of someone else getting rich by selling Spectral Tigers at 500 dollars each).

People were up in arms all the time but there were always apologists.
When the TCG loot appeared they said : "Calm down, it's not an itemshop".
When the itemshop appeared they said : "Calm down, they are only selling pets, not mounts or items".
When they sold that retarded horse they said : "Calm down, they are not selling items".
Now with the transmog gear they say "Calm down, they are not selling heroic raid gear".

Oh and they always go to their "slippery slope" argument when someone mentions this.